


The Grant Collection

by Roarkfish



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Brooklyn, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Comfort Food, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Memory Loss, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Paranoia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Steve Rogers, Referenced Disassociating, Sculpture, Secrets, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 07:51:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15681165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roarkfish/pseuds/Roarkfish
Summary: Five years back in Brooklyn, Bucky is a new person. Or at least he gets to be a person now, which is a marked improvement. He's got Steve, a great friend in Natalia, and his therapist Andrew has guided him through some terrible shit. He might be hiding a few things from Steve the last couple years, but he's totally going to own up to it! Right after this weird, stressful day is finally over. Art expos, am I right?!Not a fix-it, considering, but I guess nobody lost an arm and Thanos never showed up, sooo....yeah.





	The Grant Collection

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in November of 2016 over two days without ever doing any real editing, so I apologize for any typos, general mistakes, and the pure lack of structure. It just wanted to get it out of me and was afraid to look back. I still like it, upon rereading it now, and I hope you will, too.

It's just about 9:30 when he finally sees him. After their exchange this morning, he knew Steve would follow him here, and inevitably get too close to keep Bucky from noticing him sneaking around the expo. Bucky likes to think he would have told Steve about the expo if he had been given more time to prepare, that if he hadn't found out Thursday night that he'd have a booth Friday morning, he would have been honest about why he'd be gone most of the weekend. But he knows he probably wouldn't have, which makes him feel that much worse. It would have required admitting to the sneaking in and out of their place, for getting on four years now, that they've been patently ignoring. Correction: Bucky has been ignoring that it's definitely not okay and continued on anyway, and Steve hadn't noticed anything was up until six months ago. Not that the guy’s oblivious; he definitely sees a lot when he thinks there's something to pay attention to. He just didn't seem to think that he might want to pay attention like that after the first year back in each other's lives went so well. Well, considering.

 

Regardless, Steve is skulking three booths away, pretending to be incredibly interested in abstract acrylic paintings by a balding old man sporting a ponytail, while he’s clearly trying to assess anyone that comes near Bucky's booth. Which is a shame, because some of those abstracts are really, really good. Well, maybe it's only clear to Bucky what Steve is doing. For one, he's carefully, surreptitiously watching for Steve to do exactly what he knew he would do. For two, Bucky is obscenely better at this than Steve, so the poor guy really sticks out to him. Bucky has suggested a few times that he train Steve in these kinds of skills, so he wouldn't suck as much, or so Talia wouldn't tease him so much, or, he once said outright, so he could be better at his job. But Steve is diametrically opposed to bringing up anything that has to do with how Bucky got to be where he was prior to them meeting up in Bucharest. All that was for his therapist and nobody else, apparently. Bucky still,  _ still _ doesn't remember everything from before, but he spent so much time feeling like his mind, his body just intrinsically  _ knew _ what to do, that now he just likes to pretend it's all instinct and nothing more. He knows it's not, but he can't remember the evidence to prove himself wrong, so fuck it.

 

Bucky decides that he'll ignore Steve unless the punk gets within ten feet of the booth with that self-righteous, self-endangering look he often gets in his eye. He  _ can _ track Steve's movements and man the booth like nothing's off, but he decides he probably doesn't need to. There's not actually anything to worry about in a place like this, so he lets Steve do his own thing. Which will probably be the same thing all morning, because the sappy fuck worries like nobody else. Steve’s fucking adorable when he gets like that, Bucky knows better than anyone else, but this booth was requested for a reason, damnit. Not that he really expected to get it. There's obviously some kind of serious vetting process for quality, because most everything he's seen this weekend has been amazing. He's been just as exhausted the past two nights from feeling thoroughly outclassed and under prepared as he has from standing all day, then boxing up and lugging his work onto trucks for buyers. Okay, he shouldn't lie to himself that the physical exertion mattered, but pretending he's vaguely normal in his head helps sometimes. But no, standing around anxious all day, surrounded by wonderfully talented people, trying to sell his sculptures that he'd put his blood and sweat into, trying to let himself believe that other people  _ actually _ liked his work? All that definitely took a toll. Yet these people still liked it enough to buy almost all his work, a concept that is still staggering. He knows he was selling himself short on Friday, which he should have adjusted for as the day went on and he figured out what he was doing, but he really had a hard time believing that someone would pay that much for something  _ he _ made. And a part of him knows that he would make so much more money if he put his sculptures in a gallery or something, let rich people buy them, but he figures that much attention would be bad for him. Assuming he could  _ get _ a gallery opening.

 

He might be lost in his thoughts, gazing distantly at the metal shoulder of the sculpture displayed on his right, but Bucky knows immediately when a short, brunet man of slender build, wearing designer glasses and cheap shoes, is approaching his booth. He also knows Steve is looking, judging, because he knows Steve's not going to stop doing it. Bucky continues to ignore it. He welcomes the short man politely and tries to apologize for the lack of any signs with his name or anything. People seriously got on his case for that, but at least he had some of those business cards he had had made when he started renting the storage facility two or so years ago. A little paper rectangle answers a lot of questions faster than he cares to try with his mouth. The short man, though, doesn't pay any attention to Bucky, preferring to go straight to the tablet showing everything for sale that isn't currently on display at the expo. Bucky is genuinely surprised that all he has left to sell is the four pieces around his booth and what he’s calling the Grant Collection that's displayed on the tablet. There had been a lot of fucking pieces in storage after three and a half-ish years, so he made almost all of it available for sale to see what he could clear out, but it never occurred to him that people would buy basically  _ all _ of it.

 

“Is this everything? Is this the whole Grant Collection? Is it all still available for sale?” The short man sounds incredibly nervous, not looking at Bucky as he speaks, just fervently swiping through the slideshow on the tablet like he was checking for a sculpture missing from the set.

 

Bucky laughs awkwardly, because the social situation probably calls for such behavior after this weird guy being so weird, and, more importantly, because he actually feels like he can occasionally express himself honestly with strangers at this point in his life. The expo has been good for practicing that, actually. “Yeah, it's all there and it's all still for sale. Not really something that most people want, I guess, but if you're interested in buying, I have all twelve pieces in storage in Ridgewood to pick up any time.”

 

He can't get a solid read on the guy when he twitches around like that and he starts to worry that he was assuming too much, that the man's probably already lost interest, but Dior glasses finally look up at Bucky, the face behind them positively beaming. “My client sent me here to get the Grant Collection, the  _ whole _ collection, or I couldn't come back. You have no ide- just, you have no idea!” The man giggles incessantly to himself as he pulls out a business card and a pen from his jacket, writing something on the back of the card. Bucky just tries not to look too concerned for the man's sanity as he watches, then takes the card as it's handed to him. “Now, this is the amount my client suggested, but I have authorization to go a bit higher if that's not enough for the whole collection. My client is adamant that I acquire  _ everything _ .”

 

Bucky watches the man's jubilant, sweating face as he speaks, watches his hands as they shake putting the pen back into his jacket. Bucky thinks the guy might actually be kind of unhinged and just wasting his time, but he looks at the business card anyway. The name on the front means nothing to him; probably just as fake as the name on his own card. There's no phone number, no email, no website, or even an occupation listed. Waste of time. To humor the guy, he turns the card over. And that, that right there is a considerable amount of money. It's not an absurd number written by a child, like a million zillion dollars, nor is it a random series of numbers written by someone confused. This is way too much for anything he's ever made, even for the twelve large pieces of the collection sold together, but this could potentially be a serious offer and not just the guy in front of him making fun.

 

“If it's not enough, I can offer yo-” Bucky holds up a finger to shush the nervous man, whose sweating situation is becoming very noticeable in more than a visual way.

 

Bucky stares at the card for another three seconds, then looks back to the man with his decision made. He smiles pleasantly, but his words and tone are all business. “I think the amount written here is perfectly acceptable, don't you think? I take cash or wired payments on pickup, and if you give me a moment, I can write down the storage address for you.” He finds one of his cards and a pen, but keeps talking while he writes, “You’re going to want a damn big truck to get all twelve moved when they're boxed up, and you'll want something that can take a helluva lot of weight. Bring a couple of  _ considerate _ movers, like people that move pianos if you can't find specialists. I can get everything ready to go by three o’clock today if you're in that much of a hurry, but if another time or day works better, I can work with that.” Bucky noticed the man shifting his arms around while he was writing, but nothing that triggered the ingrained sense of danger he normally relies on. Which makes sense, given Bucky sees fifty grand in the guy's hand when he looks up. Fifty grand, like from a bank, with the official little band holding it together that you can't take off without ripping it.  _ Obviously _ not dangerous. Jesus fuck. His surprise is not something Bucky tries to hide because seriously, even the Asset would have been surprised at seeing this squirrely, sweaty man whip out fifty grand out of nowhere. The Asset just wouldn't have shown the emotion on its face.

 

The man takes and reads the business card Bucky was extending forward with a hand, and replaces it with the money, covering the cash with his own, shaky hand. “My client wants to ensure that you don’t feel inclined to sell the collection to anyone else before it can be retrieved from Ridgewood at three o'clock. So consider this an endowment to the arts, Mr. Winters. And thank you, from me personally.” The man smiles and nods quickly before removing his sweaty hands and stumbling back into the crowd. Bucky quickly stuffs the money into his bag under the table before anyone could see, and his eyes follow the man as far as he can without leaving his booth. The guy looks to be making a beeline for the exit anyway, but Bucky watches after that direction until someone else approaches his booth.

 

He puts away his tablet at some point to prevent anyone from asking about the collection that is now apparently spoken for. The rest of the morning is busy enough to put that oddity and Steve's surveillance mostly out of Bucky's mind. He sells the last four sculptures he has, the ones he had displayed around his booth, and he finally doesn't hesitate to ask for more for them, but he's still secretly overwhelmed by disbelief when they agree on what he asks. The expo ends at noon and, after quickly closing up his booth that was barebones anyway, Bucky carts his four sold pieces to the back to box them up and help load them onto trucks and vans for his buyers. One buyer even tries to pay him extra because she has no one to do any heavy lifting and he was already loading the work she bought from him and everything else she purchased today. He would have done it anyway, so he politely declines her additional payment. Not to be totally refused, she gives him an affectionate hug anyway. He waits to get out of sight before checking his person for anything that wasn't there before or had been there but isn't now. It's not enough to calm himself, though. He knows that the buyer is just some overly friendly lady that has a lot of money to spend on art, he does. He knows that. But strangers touching him that much is still something he can’t seem to handle at all. So here he is in the men's room in the back convention center, checking himself for needle marks or signs of poisoning in the mirror. This is just what's necessary for him to feel safe sometimes.

 

He eats at four different restaurants to have his favorite comfort food, triple bacon cheeseburgers, for lunch to prevent anyone from noticing he eats like a horse. This is actually a bad sign, he lets himself admit. Steve's strange doctor friend figured out a long time ago that Bucky needs about seven or eight thousand calories a day to stay healthy when he's active. His active is different from other people's, but he tries to aim for at least five thousand now that he's not doing so much anymore. Even still, only going to four burger joints for lunch when he barely had two breakfasts is not a good sign. He hasn't eaten well the whole weekend, actually. He would blame it on the anxiety of trying to sell his artwork, but he knows that isn't half of it. Yeah, he was showing off his sculptures to people in public for the first time ever, but he was also showing these perfect strangers an honest part of himself that he's been lying about to Steve. Ignoring it this weekend hasn't done him any favors with his anxiety, but ignoring that Steve knows he's lying about something has been making his anxiety worse for too long. 

 

And he really does feel bad that it's been only  _ Talia _ that has ever known about anything he's been doing in secret, even if she's only known for a few months, but he's glad she has the decency to not harass him much about lying to Steve. She just occasionally breaks into his studio in Bay Ridge when he's not there and leaves copies of absurd self-help books, like  _ Do-It-Yourself Coffins _ and  _ How to Avoid Huge Ships _ . She's threatening him, telling him repeatedly that he needs to tell Steve, who's her close friend too, but she gets Bucky and doesn't back him into a corner over something he's scared about. He might only remember her since Bucharest, or maybe DC?, but he feels like they might as well have been friends for decades by the way she understands certain things not even his therapist does after five years. Bucky is incredibly appreciative that Talia still hasn't told Steve, and he’s about 93% sure she wouldn’t have unless he punked out and asked her to do it for him or something. Well, no; she would never have done it then.

 

But it's too late now that Steve followed him to the expo after this morning's fight-not-fight, not that he knew terribly much before. Before today, Steve definitely knew that Bucky has been sneaking around at least since March, when he was so jazzed to go use the fancy new welding mask he bought himself for his birthday and barely made an effort to hide his exit. After that the punk was making special note of when Bucky did something unusual, like shower before bed and again in the middle of the night or put diesel in his truck when he had barely driven anywhere all week. And Bucky could have been actually sneaky if he tried, so that there was nothing for Steve to notice. But that's definitely using the same kind of skills that Steve hates inherently, and it would hurt him worse when he found out. And Bucky does say, 'when,’ not, 'if,’ because he still likes to pretend in his head that lying was going to be a short-term deal, and that he was going to tell Steve when he sorted his shit out, when he was ready to be vulnerable like that. He likes to pretend he wouldn't have kept lying forever. And yet, here's his life: almost four years of secretly creating works of art out of metal stolen from construction sites, using skills he doesn't remember learning. But it works for him, the expressing himself through art stuff. Not so much the lying to Steve stuff. Bucky's afraid that the skills for this are from the same source as being painfully aware of Steve's attempts at espionage, but he can't even lie and tell Steve it's from something else because he doesn't actually  _ know _ if it's different or not. And even still, if Steve thinks the sculptures are another thing that's just for Bucky and his therapist, the art stuff’ll just stop right now. Maybe he can't turn off everything else rattling around his head, but he knows he can stop at least this one thing.

 

God, all of today has been exhausting. Bucky may have given himself time to eat as much as he should have before the pickup, but he's pretty sure he didn't give himself time to meet up with someone who can properly check fifty thousand dollars to make sure he isn't carrying around cash from a recent robbery or a new kind of tracking device that he wouldn't recognize. Not that Bucky knows anyone that would do him that much of a favor on this short of notice. Well, he  _ does _ know how to find someone that could do such a favor, and then give them five painfully good reasons to do it; but one, he doesn't have enough time for that  _ and _ checking the money, and two, it would draw attention to himself and he doesn't want to deal with that. And again, he considers knowing all this kind of stuff to be instinct, because on some level he understands that all this could be what keeps him alive. So rather than continuing to carry around a stack of cash someone might be looking for, in whatever fashion, Bucky drives to his least favorite drop box, the poorly placed one in Little Odessa, and gets rid of the cash. Maybe for now, maybe for forever, but either way, he only has an hour and a half to get to his storage facility and prepare for this sketchy buyer.

 

He knows Steve would be mad about the drop boxes,  _ all _ of them and not just the ones in Brooklyn, but it makes him feel safer to know he has them there, even though he never uses them. Well, he's using the Little Odessa one today, but he won't miss it if it's compromised. He hates this stupid neighborhood and its overabundance of ex-Soviets for reasons he doesn't even care that he doesn't fully remember. He just knows for certain that he hates hearing so much Russian spoken in one place. But he does quickly pick up about two pounds of vareniki and a fork at that little grocery he likes before he heads north, because fuck you, that's why. And another fuck you, that's why: Bucky is incredibly protective of his truck since it, a beautiful, black F-450 Super Duty, was the first major thing he bought for himself after Bucharest, so he never lets anyone eat or smoke while driving with him. No exceptions for anyone, even Steve when he gets really excited about food truck elotes. Especially not then, to be honest. But sometimes, in secret, when he's anxious, Bucky'll eat vareniki while he's driving. Just vareniki, though, and only from that grocery. He doesn't understand why, but sometimes he just doesn't make the rules for his own head. Regardless, the standards of anxiety, privacy, and that grocery's vareniki are met, so Bucky eats about a pound and a half of what he bought by the time he gets to his storage facility. He should have eaten more, given his current calorie deficit, but he just can't eat as much as he wants to when he's stressed like this. He doesn't forget to clean every trace of his secret vareniki snack before heading into the facility, even though he's wound up and distracted, because he takes care of his Super Duty like he gave birth to it.

 

The space he rents is about a quarter of a modestly sized warehouse, and before he sold everything this weekend, he genuinely needed all the space he could get. A couple years’ worth of making these sculptures adds up to a helluva lot of storage space. Yet now, all that's left is the Grant Collection and his private set, which is kind of funny; the first set of pieces, his first  _ collection _ , that he made that he honestly liked and was proud of will be all but the last to leave here. Bucky feels a bit wistful about it, instead of amused, but he just gets to work about arranging the twelve crates near the loading dock. He realizes while he's working that he should probably just end his lease here and go back to storing his private set and newly finished work at his studio, sort of like how it was in the beginning. There's no point in paying for a place this big if he doesn't have real need it. Yet the idea of sort of starting from scratch, even in such a positive way, is intimidating. Not having the physical evidence around that he  _ can _ make good work, that he  _ has _ come so far, seems weirdly scary all of a sudden. A small part of him worries that he shouldn't have sold anything and just rented more storage space as he made more sculptures, that he should go find every buyer and give the money back so he can hoard his work like some kind of narcissistic art-hoarding dragon. Yet the gratification of people liking his art enough to pay for it is a weird kind of nice that Bucky doesn't think he'll get over any time soon, so he tells the little absurd part of himself to stuff it and goes about his business.

 

Even if Bucky didn't have a very nice, but usually unnecessary, security setup for his storage facility alerting him, it would have been incredibly easy for him to notice Steve sneaking into the place at quarter to three. The guy isn't bad at it; just needs better training if he's going to go up against highly trained people, which will definitely happen with his job. Bucky isn't exactly traveling the world as a secret agent type, but he sure as hell knows what he's doing better than Steve in that arena. It's endlessly frustrating that he's not allowed to do everything possible to keep the guy safe, but he really is trying to trust Steve to make the right choice. Trusting the punk doesn't come as natural as it used to, yet knowing it once did soothes the frustration quite a lot. Anyhow, Bucky doesn't give any sign that he notices the intrusion to the facility, and instead lets his intruder get settled in the rafters so he’s comfortable. It's only then that it finally occurs to him that today has been some kind of wonky version of their normal behavior: instead of Steve pretending that he isn't trying to watch Bucky sneaking away, Bucky is pretending to not see Steve sneaking closer. Truly, he’s felt an entirely separate layer of awful about the day's new situation since he realized that this is what it would be. Since he left the house and pretended he didn't see Steve get his civvie boots from the porch. He doesn't know how to address this out loud, how to apologize to Steve for hiding this. Bucky can remember maybe two other instances in his whole life that he's even halfway fibbed to Steve, though he knows that doesn't really say much with his memory situation. It's possible that he used to lie all the time, and right now he'd be perfectly okay with that if he could remember how he fixed things just one time. Just so he knew what to do.

 

The doorbell rings at exactly 1500, and a quick check of Bucky's phone for the surveillance cameras shows the short man fidgeting at the door, an unmarked, reinforced box truck backing up to the loading dock, and a black luxury sedan idling next to Bucky's beloved Super Duty. Just a bit too close for his preference, which would actually be across the alley and down fifty feet, thank you. He pushes his prickly thoughts aside and opens the door with a smile for the man waiting. “Good afternoon! I've got all twelve of the Grant Collection waiting in here for you, but do you mind if I look over your truck there? We can deal with payment after that. I just want to make sure it can handle the weight of everything before we load it up.” Well, that  _ is _ a legitimate concern, that a buyer’s transport won't buckle under the weight of their purchase. He does work with heavy materials and he rarely makes anything smaller than five feet tall, so he checked before loading any vehicle this weekend. However, his real interest right now is making sure he isn't about to let in a squad of armed men through the loading dock. In any of the other sales he's made in the last three days, such a worry would be completely absurd. After the sweaty little man and the ‘endowment to the arts,’ though, Bucky is covering his ass. He really does want to believe that everything is fine, just ostensibly weird. He would enjoy the ego boost of getting paid  _ that much _ for his work, too. He's still going to cover his ass.

 

“Oh, I don't think that should be a problem, Mr. Winters. Would you like to speak with the movers at all? It's their truck we're using today, so they should have whatever answers you need.” The short man continues to fidget while he speaks, though he seems significantly more calm than this morning. Maybe arranging the sale saved his bacon with his client after all.

 

“If they don't mind giving me a rundown of the specs, I'd appreciate talking to 'em.” The man nods, starts down the steps, and walking to the truck’s cab, so Bucky closes the door and follows, knowing for certain that all five locking mechanisms engaged behind him. The short man tries pretty hard to not appear daunted by the movers waiting in the cab and even manages to semi-confidently ask them to come down and speak to Bucky. Despite those efforts, the movers still chuckle when the man practically leaps away from the cab door swinging open. Poor sap. The three movers pile out of the cab and stretch their legs before addressing Bucky with disinterest and thinly veiled annoyance. He asks them about the dimensions of the cargo area, the size of the engine, and the specs of the suspension. He already knows all of it just by looking, because he knows his shit, damnit. He just needs them busy while he gets close enough to see how low the truck is sitting and determine if there's anything in it already. Which apparently there isn’t, which is great news. Well, there could still be something pretty light in there that could still kill him or put him jail. Bucky chooses to be glad it's not something big and annoying, like a SWAT team.

 

Anyhow, the movers don't think highly of Bucky's intelligence or he needs to think a lot less of theirs, because everything they said was laughably wrong. He very briefly entertains the thought of making a game out of pretending to be stupid to mess with them. Only very, very briefly, though, because he doesn't forget how it feels to have everyone around him think he had nothing worthwhile in his head. Instead, he tells them what the  _ real _ answers to his questions are and asks them to not be dicks to people like that. “I dunno if you work moving stuff like this a lot, but I ain't exactly keen on recommending you to my future buyers, guys. Be cool, alright? Jesus.” He's dismissive of them right now, but he sees that they honestly feel like jerks, so they should probably back off for a while. Then when the four of them load the crates onto the truck, he can be friendly and joke around with them, and they doesn't think they'll be rude to him or the short man. He knows all this just by looking. Well, shit. The one mover that's more rotund is a lot more observant than the others, it seems. Bucky will have to be really careful about how much weight he takes on. Too much weight lifted for his body size could draw attention. Bucky being observant is instincts. Anyone else being observant is dangerous.

 

Bucky walks slowly toward the sedan where the short man is speaking quietly through the barely open window of the backseat. Bucky can hear the words of the elderly woman in the car just as easily as he can hear the short man's words outside it. Not that he should hear any of their words at that volume at this distance, but he can, so he pretends he hears nothing of their enraging conversation. And it's not that he cares that this woman is the man's grandmother, or that he cares that she's incredibly rude, and he certainly doesn't care that the man's 'client’ is this old bat. He does care, however, that they're speaking fluent Russian, he does care that her accent speaks clearly of Leningrad- er, St. Petersburg, and he definitely, absolutely cares that she knows there is a thirteenth piece to the Grant Collection and fully intends to leave with it. All intense, inexplicable prejudice against Russians aside, there is no rational explanation for anyone other than himself knowing that sculpture even exists. He crates up everything he completes once he's started something new, and he transports everything to storage himself with the Super Duty in the middle of the night. Talia doesn't know about the Grant Collection at all because it's been in storage for two years, and Talia was literally the only person alive that knew he did anything more creative than even fridge magnet poetry before he applied for a booth at the expo. No one at the expo ever saw anything from his private set because he didn't take them out of storage to showcase, and there are zero photos in existence of anything in that set that he could have accidentally displayed on the tablet. And the thirteenth piece is definitely in that private set, for no one to see but Bucky. It's part of the Grant Collection because he made it during that same time and it fits the theme of the whole collection. It's in part of his private set because it meant so much more to him to make than the rest of the collection did, and it's so much more personal even still. For Bucky, each sculpture is powerfully emotional to make. It's cathartic as hell to build with his hands instead of destroy. Yet when a work is complete, he's released from the emotions that overpowered him while he made it, and so he feels released from the work, too. That's why he had so much to sell, to relieve himself of. He's proud of his art, but he's not particularly attached to it after he's done creating it. Except for the private set, that they'll probably have to bury him with. Bucky reminds himself to ask Steve later about buying abnormally large burial plots.

 

Bucky's approach to the sedan is as politely slow as he could tolerate, but after a certain point he's practically on top of the short man, so he clears his throat. The man, who doesn't shift around near as much when speaking to his awful grandmother, startles something awful at the sound and jumps half a foot into the air. When he's collected himself, he asks, “Is everything well with our transport? If so, my client would like to personally observe the collection loaded onto the truck. We, I mean,  _ I _ am prepared to settle the payment whenever you have a moment.” There's that fidgeting again. This isn't relieving any kind of tension for Bucky at all. Having a stranger know anything of his private dealings is greatly unnerving, but anyone knowing something so carefully guarded feels like he's drowning in the Potomac. Maybe getting the grandmother out of the car, letting him see this crafty old Soviet cow, will help him feel more in control of the situation.

 

“No, the truck should be perfectly fine. Movers seem alright, too. I actually anticipated that your client might feel the need to be more involved with the whole process. I took the liberty of displaying all twelve pieces next to their crates by the loading dock, so that your client could see them upclose before we get it all loaded. And I've got my bank numbers down pat after that crazy expo, so just let me know when to start rattling them off.” He laughs awkwardly to sell that last bit, which seems to work for the short man. He's a fraction more relaxed now after tensing up when Bucky said the collection is on display for the client. If Bucky were a betting man, which he isn't since Steve barred him from weekly poker, he would put good money on the short man having been completely oblivious to the thirteenth piece being a part of what his grandmother demanded by telling him to get 'everything,’ until after he'd given Bucky fifty grand and left the expo, and now the short man is going to learn the hard way that a goose is not a pig's friend. Okay, Bucky should remember better by now that Russian sayings like that rarely make sense in English, and that avoiding the sound of Russian words in his head doesn't help when he's trying to be melodramatic. He lets a small sigh escape. May as well get this shitshow on the road. “If you and your client would like to come inside, we can get started.”

 

Bucky turns and makes his way toward the door, using the back-up mirrors at the loading dock to watch the short man at the sedan. It takes a moment of quiet arguing, but the miserable old woman finally tells the man that she  _ does _ want to see the collection, then hits him with the car door as she gets out. Just as well, Bucky feels like he's been hit with a door himself, though more along the lines of a hundred ton bank vault door than a car door. The Soviet cow knows that there's a thirteenth piece because she's seen it. Well, she's seen its crate. She's been here before.

 

On Saturday morning Bucky arranged a sale for a massive sculpture of his to a retired accountant from Jersey, that paid  _ very _ handsomely for it when she picked it up after the expo that day. Bucky had had to rearrange most of the work still for sale to have room to maneuver the buyer's purchase through the facility and onto her truck. He actually needed to use his forklift for that piece, so he must not have considered the need to pay more attention to the buyer looking around. The buyer, the retired accountant from Jersey, is apparently just the short man's awful grandmother in an ugly chintz dress and reading glasses hanging from around her neck. Right now she's dressed more appropriately for what her actual paygrade seems to be, if obviously trying to disguise any similarity to herself yesterday. The large sunglasses certainly aren't doing the job well. Regardless of her clothes, she's a devious little shit. She must have crept around the sectioned off corner of the storage facility to where he keeps the private set and raw materials for sculptures. The grandmother wouldn't have had to figure out his code for labeling the sculptures’ crates. It's just based on the date he boxed them up, anyway. She would only have needed to see that the codes on twelve crates in the main part of the facility were reasonably similar to one in the private set. Even if it weren't the case about the collection missing a piece, this duplicitous old Russian bag is clearly out of touch with reality. Sending her nervous, frightened grandson as her agent to use a fake name and offer way too much money for a collection that she didn't tell him was incomplete? Then throw fifty grand in Bucky's lap? She could have come herself? She could have had the grandson at least drop her name? What the fuck is all this covert shit for if they don't have a SWAT team in the truck waiting to attack him?

 

Bucky still has another four seconds before the short man and the old woman reach the steps to the door, so he places his left hand on a brick to the side of the doorway as if to lean on it, and pulls the keys from his belt to unlock the door. The physical key unlocks the deadbolt that came with the place. The sensor hidden on the brick disengages the locks  _ he _ put in. The sensor also disables the security system's offensive features. Lucky for Steve's break-in earlier, Bucky has everything set up to only use poisons he knows they're both immune to. The two people behind him? Probably wouldn't fare as well. Though honestly, Bucky isn't sure how well he's going to fare with this whole thing when the old woman is still whisper-cursing at her grandson in Russian while they climb the stairs behind him. Bucky internally rolls his eyes as he opens the door, then leads them over to the collection displayed by the loading dock. He lets them look while he operates the rolling door and helps the movers bring the truck all the way back, yet still keeps an eye on the old woman's movements. The sectioned off area is way the hell in the back and there's nothing else in the facility, so she'd have to creep across a lot of empty space to get anywhere close to the thirteenth piece. It'd be real hard for him to not notice her even starting to think about it. Yet he managed to let her get the drop on him last time, so watching her like a hawk doesn't seem too out of the question. Besides, Steve is watching all of them like a hawk from the rafters.

 

She does seem to honestly enjoy his work, though. Even with the sunglasses trying to cover half her face, Bucky can tell from her whole countenance, from her posture, from her movements, that each sculpture she approaches evokes a great deal of emotion for her. She walks up to each of the twelve standing there and just stares, hands clasped together, feet apart. If he wasn't already mentally reviewing places in Jersey he might use in case he needs to get rid of her body, Bucky might feel really appreciated by this woman. She seemed similarly enamored by the one she bought yesterday, too, though these are a horse of an entirely different color. When she's through eyeballing the collection, she stiffens at the realization that the thirteenth piece isn't among the rest. She immediately starts berating her grandson's intelligence and telling him he's a disgrace to their family and yada yada yada, he's failed her for the last time. The short man just does his best not to cower too much, no defense for himself at all. Bucky lets himself feel a bit of sympathy for the guy. Even if he's a bit of a wet sock, the guy doesn't deserve this kind of treatment, especially from his family.

 

The short man soldiers on anyway. “Mr. Winters, my client has expressed strong interest in acquiring the thirteenth piece of this collection in addition to what you have displayed here. It would be very much appreciated if you might be accommodating in fulfilling that interest. Of course an increase in payment would be necessary, but that won't be an issue.” He tries to keep calm and confident. Not really successful.

 

“I hate to disappoint you or your client, but there is nothing to add to the collection here.” Bucky keeps his tone and face reasonably confused, as if he truly knew nothing of a final piece and was genuinely surprised at the suggestion of one. Let the Russian wench stew on it.

 

She does, too. She's visibly mad before they even pretend that the short man has to translate what Bucky said for her. That Russian carbuncle made boring jokes about the hijinks of growing cabbages out of season yesterday and she did it all in perfect, if Trenton-accented, English. Today, she speaks Russian, assuring her grandson that she  _ knows _ there's a thirteenth sculpture and that Bucky just needs to be properly persuaded to give it up.

 

“My client is very insistent that all thirteen pieces leave with us today, Mr. Winters. A considerable increase can be made to your payment if that's what is necessary to obtain the full collection, sir.” Oh, that isn't enough of an offer, apparently. Not for his grandmother, not with that face she's giving. She's trying so hard to hide herself with all this smoke and mirrors bullshit today, but she  _ sucks _ at hiding anything herself. The Asset wouldn't deal with this amateur, and neither should Bucky. Yet he continues to be nice.

 

“With the generosity of your client, I would love to have something else to sell you, I would. But if you look around you, you'll notice that we're surrounded by a whole lotta nothing. Grant Collection is the last of it. I'm sorry.” Still confused. Very apologetic. Casually not watching the old cow try not to go ballistic. It amuses Bucky more than it should that the short man actually  _ does _ try to translate for his grandmother before she interrupts him. Apparently he's trying to be authentic, or so he tells his grandmother. She's fed up now, because she finally tells him that Bucky is hiding the last piece in the sectioned off area, that she's seen it there, and if they out its location, Bucky will have to sell it to them. She even points wildly while she's ranting; she points to Bucky, to the sectioned off area, to the two of them, back to Bucky. That poor man must think his grandmother is crazy after all this. Or, maybe, he already did. Bucky can only imagine what this looks like to Steve.

 

“I apologize, sir, I don't mean to be rude, but would it poss-”

 

Bucky holds up a shushing hand. “I'm sorry, excuse me for just a moment.” He's tired of waiting. He turns to the old woman and addresses her in Russian. <Mrs. Esmond, forgive my neglect of you. Are you enjoying  _ Howling _ ? Perhaps you've not installed it in your study yet, it's only been a day. And it's been nice to meet your grandson Kirill, he's very polite.> The bullshit card he gave had said Frank, yet she's called him nothing but Kiryusha since she got here. Honestly, woman. <And since you're so keen on it, I tell you that there's only twelve pieces because there's only twelve to sell. The crate you saw while you were sneaking around the  _ private _ section of my  _ private _ storage facility while I loaded a half-ton sculpture onto a truck for you? That's part of a  _ private _ set of sculptures that only my eyes will ever see. So if you have any illusions that I will sell what's in that crate to you, please understand that God himself does not have enough money to buy it.> Bucky keeps it pretty cool for the most part, except the snippy bits, if only to give himself evidence that he did his best later if everything goes to shit anyway.

 

Short Man/Frank/Kirill is openly horrified. Clearly Bucky understanding and speaking Russian was not in the world of possibilities he considered when he woke up this morning to do his crotchety old grandmother's bidding. Which, to Bucky, is stupid. Nobody walks into a place using another language as a cover unless they know for certain that the other people won't understand it. Bucky is bothered by Steve being a less than admirable spy but this is just painful. Everything else today has been terrible to witness, surely, but a preschool fuck up like this is obscene. And poor Kirill probably isn't at fault here, just did as he was told. Yet somehow the poor fuck is still here, caught with his dick in his hands. Imagine that.

 

The Client/Soviet Cow/Mrs. Esmond, however, is pissed. Maybe she thought she really would get what she wanted. Maybe she thought she's really that slick. Maybe she's secretly both a wealthy ex-Soviet art collector  _ and _ a retired accountant living in Jersey. Maybe she's neither. Nevertheless, she seems damn angry that Bucky is on to her shtick and has no intention of selling her the 'complete’ collection. He's not even sure he'll sell her the twelve he meant to at this point.

 

<Jeremy Baron Winters, you will sell me that sculpture or you will sell me nothing at all.> For one, Bucky is incredibly happy that he did the leg work to make this identity reasonably legitimate, because her pulling out his middle name as a weapon is hilarious. For two, she can't really be serious in thinking that using a mom-voice on him will make him budge. She can’t. It's too absurd. But somehow she is.

 

<I am happy to keep the collection here, Mrs. Esmond. May I escort you and your grandson back to your car?> Bucky's not even going to pretend on this. Yeah, they offered a lot of fucking money, but right now he'd rather pay the same amount just to never deal with them again. Actually, maybe Kirill’s okay. But she can fuck off.

 

<Kiryusha, tell the movers they can go home. We're leaving.> So haughty, this one. As if she had been slighted or something, and had not at all been a manipulative, lying asshole.

 

<Babushka, we made an agreement with him. We should honor that. It's only right.> Okay, yeah. Kirill is fine, since he's trying to be respectful to Bucky after a day of lying for her.

 

<Kiryusha, the only one who made an agreement with him is you. If you want to buy his ugly sculptures, go ahead. I will be waiting in the car.> She just walks out. She doesn't give either Kirill or Bucky a second glance. She doesn't look at the movers outside when they try to talk to her. She certainly doesn't look at the collection, even as she walks past to get to the door.

 

Kirill gapes after her for a few moments, like he doesn't believe she did that. Bucky feels like the guy should know his grandmother better if he's agreeing to ridiculous schemes like this. Correction: the guy should never agree to ridiculous schemes at all. Or any schemes, for that matter. When he's done staring at the empty space his grandmother once held, he turns back to Bucky. “I cannot even begin to apologize for her, so please forgive me that I don't try. She does love the Grant Collection immensely, please know that part is true. I would go ahead and buy it, for the price we agreed, but I can't authorize a transfer without her, and I couldn't afford to buy even one sculpture myself. I'm sorry, Mr. Winters.” Anxious but earnest, Kirill is.

 

“Don't apologize, Kirill; it's over. I don't like that all this happened, but I don't have to like it. It happened, then it was over. Life moves on. Just tell your grandmother to enjoy  _ Howling _ and leave me alone.” Somewhere in Manhattan, Bucky's therapist is fist-pumping and doesn't know why. He smiles at the thought of it.

 

“Thank you for being so understanding, Mr. Winters. After all this, we don't deserve that. The money I gave you at the expo is still yours, so don't worry about anyone trying to get it back. You won't hear from us again.” The awkward smile he gives Bucky as he starts backing away is heartbreaking. The fidgeting hands and the nearly tripping over a broom are what really kill it, though. Kirill gets outside and tells the movers that they won't be moving anything, then gets into the black sedan and drives away. Bucky may or may not hold his breath while Kirill backs out, and if he does, it is because he loves the Super Duty very much and not because he thinks Kirill incompetent.

 

Bucky shouts down to the movers to ask them if they get paid by the hour or for the day. They lie and say by the hour. Even if it wasn't obvious in their faces that they were lying, Bucky knows the more rotund mover is smart enough to know the question being asked at all means they're about to be offered more money. He hops down from the open loading dock to get in the Super Duty and grab a sizable wad of twenties from a hiding spot he built into the console. The movers give their thanks for his kindness and head out, and Bucky climbs back up the loading dock and closes the rolling door. He knows there's nothing left for him to do but get the Grant Collection boxed up, but Steve had to endure the last hour of bullshit, too, and that really isn't fair to anyone. Especially when the actual reason Steve is here is considered.

 

“Steve, if talking to me is something you still wanna do, I'd like for you to come down here.” It takes a solid forty-seven seconds of silence before Bucky hears Steve making his way down from the rafters. Steve could make a straight drop and not hurt himself at all. It's only two stories. Three point landing, he would barely flinch. Steve takes his sweet time climbing down and walking over to Bucky. His jaw is set tight like he's angry and trying not to show quite how much. Which means he's fucking seething.

 

“So you wanna tell me what I saw while I followed you today? You knew I was there. You always tell me how much I suck at that part of my job, so clearly you knew. So tell me, what did I see, Buck?” Well, it can't be said Steve isn't holding back. His face gets redder as he speaks, but he's using a very even tone and purposefully splaying his fingers wide so he doesn't curl them into fists.

 

“Where would you like me to start? Been a bit of a day. Just ask what you want to know about.” It's only after the words are out of his mouth that he knows he sounds incredibly flippant. He's gotten so much better about letting himself be entirely himself with Steve over the past few years that sometimes he fucks up and forgets that getting to be 100% Bucky with Steve shouldn't mean he gets to be 100% pissy with Steve when he's tired and grumpy. Human behavior is hard when he's trying to do it for himself and not just replicate it to avoid detection.

 

“Well, you could start with why you're selling sculptures under a fake name at art expos. Or what you put in that drop box in Brighton Beach. Or why you have this huge warehouse space. Or what the fuck those Russians were about. Or just maybe you could tell me what the fuck has been going on with you since you lied about leaving on your birthday? Any of that would be a great place to start, just jump right in, any time.” 

 

Fuck, they're doing this. Bucky meant for them to do this when he asked Steve to come down, obviously, but now they're doing this and he doesn't know what he's doing and this hurts so bad already. He’s the one that's hurt Steve and yet he hurts. Is it supposed to work like this? Is this a Bucky Is Broken thing or is this a Human thing? He never knows unless it's somebody else. Fuck, he has to tell Steve  _ some _ thing. “Uh, well, the Russians were supposed to buy these sculptures over here and then they didn't, because the old woman wanted what I wasn't selling, I guess. Um, I have this storage facility because before that expo you saw, it was almost entirely full of boxed up sculptures. Had 'em coming out my ears, basically. The expo helped get rid of them, and I got paid for it, which is nice. And I know you know that I hate going to Little Odessa, but I had to hide something that I wasn't sure if I was ever gonna retrieve it, so I figured that was the best place for it. Does that make sense? I think it works. Right?” He's beginning to lose himself to his anxiety now, but Steve's visible signs of anger aren't really getting a whole lot worse. At least there's that?

 

“So, what, you just buy and sell sculptures now? Hoard them up here and sell them under your fake name later? Is your drop box for that or is that a different thing for me to worry about?” Maybe Bucky should just give into his anxiety and run right now. Just not deal with this at all and hurt Steve even more. Hell, he could really avoid everything and never go home. That's a surefire way to destroy the last five years of trying to be a person in one fell swoop. Fuck.

 

He tries to whisper it, hoping that not making it audible to a normal human ear will make it easier for him to admit to Steve. He just moves his lips. He tries for a little louder, which is just as successful. He doesn't want Steve to hate him. He told himself that he'd just stop if this was something Steve didn't like, but being actually faced with telling Steve and the possibility of never making another sculpture is terrifying. If he was capable of losing that much control over his body without being physically compromised, Bucky is certain he'd be twitching worse than Kirill right now. Or shaking. Other people do that when they're scared. But the Asset doesn't know how to be scared. Is that better?

 

“Buck, whatever you're trying to say, I need you to say it. I'm not Clint, I can't read lips. Help me out here.”

 

“Steve, I- ...Steve, I didn't buy any of those sculptures. I made them.”

 

“What do you mean? When did you learn how to do that? Is that what you do when you sneak out? To learn how to make those sculptures over there? You couldn't tell me that before?” Steve mostly just looks surprised. Confusion and hurt are mixed in there, but the overall takeaway is that Steve would never have guessed that Bucky was capable of such an artistic pursuit. Which does hurt a lot, but not as much as it will when he actually explains the situation.

 

“No, Steve. I didn't take lessons or anything like that. I just kind of...know how to weld, I guess. When I realized that I knew a few years ago, I messed around with it until I figured out how to make something cool. It helped me work out things I was feeling without paying to see Andrew more than I usually do, so I kept doing it. Eventually that ended up with me having a lot of sculptures to sell.” Bucky doesn't look at Steve as he speaks because he doesn't want to see the moment that all of the disappointment hits his face. Or maybe it's disgust. Or worse. He doesn't want to know.

 

“That's how you make these? By welding? Okay, maybe that should have been obvious, but Bucky, you're telling me that you remember welding?” Steve sounds incredulous, but in an excited way? Bucky is afraid to look back at Steve and investigate. Steve's laugh pulls him in anyway.

 

“Why are you happy about this? You hate when I know without knowing. You hate talking about what happened before. 'That’s something for Andrew, Buck.’ That's what you always say, Steve. Why is this okay? Why is this different? Is it because I make art when I weld? Instead of me knowing how to check for explosives on your car without detonating them, or how to use any firearm put in front of me, or proper stealth, or anything else that I can use to help keep you alive, you're okay with welding because I use it to make something pretty. Thanks, Steve! Good to know what the requirements are.” He might be emotional. He might be letting it seep into his voice. He's not that close to crying, though, which helps a little. The Asset wouldn't get emotional, though, and it would never cry.

 

“No, ya jerk, they didn't teach you how to weld. O’Bannion taught you when you started working down at the navy yard with your dad. Must've been fifteen, I think. You, not O’Bannion. That crabass was old as dirt.” Steve says this with a smile, almost laughing. Because welding isn't from before. It's from what Steve calls before-before. There's a lot less to remember in the before-before than there is in the before, so Bucky doesn't really have a great chance of something he starts to remember being from back then. He does occasionally get something, but not really, so anything new that crops up from before-before is considered a great revelation.

 

“My dad was a welder until he died, right? I remembered a funeral last year and you said it was his.” It's actually really upsetting to remember going to a funeral and not knowing it was for your own father until someone else tells you. Bucky didn't even recognize the man in the portrait next to the casket. He knows his father's face now, if he ever shows up in another memory, but Bucky's worried that more memories will be like that. That he'll remember but he won't  _ remember _ .

 

“Yeah, your ma used to always say he was born welding and he'd die welding. She ended up being completely right, but it's not like anybody told her that after the funeral. You know, she loved that you started working with your dad? She told my ma once that even though she didn't see you half as much anymore, you were with him, so she didn't care.” Is this why Steve's so happy about the welding? Because she liked that he became a welder? Bucky only remembers his mother's voice and her kissing his cheek before he shipped out for war. At least he didn't have to be told it was her, though.

 

“Hey, Stevie, you wanna actually look at one of these? Seeing as I'm not waiting to get shot anymore.” Bucky is still anxious, but Steve seems to be in a significantly much better mood. If things with Steve are okay again, he might actually sleep well for once.

 

“Oh, no, I'm definitely still mad about you sneaking around and lying to me. I'm just not mad about why you did it. But please, show off your work while I'm still feeling sappy.” Fuck. Whatever works. Bucky leads Steve over to where the Grant Collection is arranged in a semicircle by the loading dock, and pulls him to the left to stand in front of the first piece. The collection does have a specific order, which is just the order in which they were made, but the timeframe in which each was made is significant to what each sculpture became. So each piece is simply called  _ First _ ,  _ Second _ , etc etc until  _ Thirteenth _ .  _ Thirteenth _ is unlike all the rest, though, in that even though it was the thirteenth made, it was not about feelings from that point in time, but a reflection of feelings from before the collection was started. “I'm sorry, Buck, but I guess I don't get it. Abstract stuff is intriguing and all, but maybe you don't remember from before-before that I didn't really understand it. I still don't.”

 

Actually, he does remember that, oddly enough, but he had hoped Steve would see it and just immediately know. That Bucky wouldn't have to explain anything, that being who they are granted Steve the magical power of understanding Bucky's work inherently. Somehow that was too much to ask for. “Steve, you know how it took six months of living in Brooklyn again for me to feel safe enough to let you hug me? And another year before I'd sleep in the same room, but only the floor?”

 

“Yeah, but it's not a big deal. Anybody would have been the same after what you went through. You worked through it, we figured it out. You're in a good place now. Is- is something wrong, Bucky?” Oh, the concern on Steve's face is painful to see. Bucky might be making the wrong choice in explaining this.

 

“Nothing is wrong, Steve, I promise. I'm just trying to remind you that I've come a long way since Bucharest, and that it hasn't always been easy, but that's okay. These twelve sculptures are related to that struggle and how my life has improved because of the efforts to overcome the scars from before. The  _ First _ was made in June about three years ago, and the  _ Twelfth _ was made in May two years ago.” Bucky indicates to the two appropriate pieces as he finishes speaking, but he looks at Steve as he does it. The punk is gazing into the sculptures so intensely, and Bucky can practically see the wheels turning in his head. The shapes and textures of each piece might not make sense as the specific things Bucky means them to represent, maybe not to anyone else, but it was exactly how Bucky needed to express himself when he did. It's okay if Steve doesn-

 

“Bucky, that June was when we first tried to have sex. Are you telling me that you made twelve sculptures about us struggling around your PTSD and anxiety for a year, so that we could make love without any panic attacks? Twelve sculptures? Twelve? Did that Russian lady know what these are about?”

 

“Yes, I did. No, she didn't. She saw something else in them that meant a lot to her. I just listed these as the Grant Collection without explaining anything.”

 

“While I appreciate that you didn't use my first name for this, you still call my dick that, so it continues to be incredibly weird. Buck, you were gonna sell this? Middle-dick-named collection about fucking?”

 

“Stevie, it wasn't about fucking. I mean, yes but not really. It took me a year of trying to get to the point that I could have sex with the man I've loved for longer than I can remember, literally. It was enraging, it was depressing, it was scary, it was fun, and it was one of the most rewarding years of my life. Yes, I'm discounting everything I don't remember; don't get started on that. I'm just saying that making this collection over that year helped me figure my shit out and not give up on something that I knew would be good for me. Now that that year is over and these twelve are done, I don't need them anymore. They were gonna help that crazy Soviet woman instead, but she was crazy and Soviet so she left.”

 

“Yeah, what happened with that? The acoustics in this place don't lend themselves to people who don't speak Russian eavesdropping from the rafters. All I know is that he looked like a kicked puppy and she got real angry.”

 

“Yeah, that was a hot mess. Major plot points: the short guy gives me fifty grand at the expo, he and his grandmother show up trying to use Russian to talk over my head, she demands to buy a piece I'm not selling, I politely tell her to fuck off, and now I'm up fifty grand for my troubles.” He's not sure if it's appropriate to be so nonchalant. As his anxiety tampers down, his mind and body feel increasingly fatigued, so he either shows nothing or everything. But this is Steve, so if Bucky can't emote very well, it's mostly understood.

 

“Is fifty grand a lot for all this? I have no frame of reference here. And what was she even trying to buy?”

 

“You know, on Friday morning, it would have sounded like way too much to me, but apparently that's not right at all. The fifty grand was just insurance that I wouldn't sell the collection out from under them, and you don't  _ even _ want to know how much they offered to buy it. The insufferable woman wanted to buy the  _ Thirteenth _ , which I repeatedly refused. She decided having nothing was better, so she left.”

 

“Thirteenth? There's another one that goes with these?” Oh, shit. Shouldn't have mentioned that part. Fuck, and his brain is slow after this goddamned rollercoaster of a day. Maybe if he just talks enough, Steve will get bored and talk about something else.

 

“I mean,  _ technically _ yes, but it's in the private set, so it doesn't count. Oh, and don't worry about those, because I'm dying with them and no one will ever see them. By the way, do you know how much it costs to have a really big plot to be buried in? Like, really big, extra deep, preferably further away from other dead peo-”

 

“Bucky, you're too tired to lie to me right now, you're not even really doing it. Just tell me whatever you're trying not to say and we can go home.”

 

“Fuck, how am I this exhausted? I shouldn't be this tired. I’m such a fuckup. I am malfunctioning. The Asset would never get this tired and slip up. The Asset would eat enough and not get stressed out and it wouldn't upset its husband an-”

 

“Whoa, slow down, Buck. Just breathe. The Asset was a lot of things, but you didn't get to be a person when they called you that. You  _ are _ a person and things don't have to be perfect all the time. The Asset wasn't allowed to 'malfunction,’ to make mistakes, but you are, Bucky. Mistakes are okay. And yes, I'm upset about you lying, but you've told me the truth, so I just need to move past it. That's okay. And fun fact: the Asset didn't get to have a husband, so I'm counting that as a major win for being a person. Just saying.” 

 

Steve's joke and smile aren't doing anything for Bucky right now. This anxiety attack has some serious death grip action. In a removed, unhelpful part of his brain, he knows that the extended months of worrying about Steve and the constant anxiety of the weekend mixed with not eating anywhere enough basically set a powder keg. Bucky probably could have freaked out while he was dealing with the Russians, and that woman would have taken advantage. He hates feeling like this, but he especially hates that he isn't in control when he feels like this. That's why he's jealous of the Asset whenever he's upset, and especially when he feels like he does right now: the Asset is always in control. Obviously not in control of its life, but in control of its emotions, or whatever situation in the field. It can't be anything else; malfunctions aren't tolerated. Bucky knows that it isn't exactly a great show of his personal growth and recovery that in his moments of weakness, he still longs for the pseudo-benefits of being a weaponized slave. He just tries to remember what Andrew says in their appointments: seven years isn't much to stack against seventy, but he's done a helluva lot in that seven.

 

“Hey, your breathing is a lot better. Are you okay to talk at all? You want me to talk? You want me to shut up? You know I'll keep talking until you tell me to shut up. Don't even have to say it, Buck, just gimmie the bird and I'll know. I'll even wait for it. There it is! See, Bucky? I know a one-finger salute when I see it. Here is a man tha-”

 

“I flip you off, yet you keep running your mouth. They got brakes where punks like you come from or do I gotta install 'em myself?” Bucky is still panting, but he gets his weak sass out in maybe three breaths, so it isn't too bad. And it makes Steve laugh, so who gives a shit?

 

“Hey, let's get outta here and go home. I ran here, so we can just take your truck. Do you want me t-”

 

“Steven Grant Rogers, if you even touch the keys to the Super Duty, you are getting divorced so goddamned hard, your Catholic-ass grandparents will rise from the grave in Ireland to get their marriage annulled. You are not driving my truck.” He says that in one breath because he's that serious  _ and _ he's feeling better. Steve laughs again, and that's good, unless it means he doesn't understand the gravity of Bucky's threat.

 

“Fine, you drive, ya jerk. Catch your breath and let's go home. We'll order in from that Vietnamese place you like and watch  _ Snow White _ .” Steve is seriously trying way too hard. He would actually spit on that restaurant and he watched  _ Snow White _ with Bucky every night for the whole first year of them being back in Brooklyn, because it calmed him down and reminded him of the before-before. This is Steve acting like he's the one that fucked up, which doesn't make any sense.

 

“Stevie, don't offer me What the Phở when I've hurt you.  _ Snow White _ is not something you suggest we watch when I've lied to you like that. If anything, I should be deprived of those things, because I suck. Let's eat pizza with olives and watch  _ Pocahontas _ . We never do those things, even though you love them, so let's do that instead.” They don't normally because Bucky hates them. A lot. Especially the olives.

 

“I'm okay, Buck. We're gonna be fine. You're the one that's actually had a rough day, so if you're ready to go, we'll go. I will take you up on that olive pizza, though.” Damnit. He offered it freely, he did. He just really hoped hard against that.

 

Looking around a moment, Bucky realizes the Grant Collection is still out of its crates for display. He's seriously fucking tired but it'll bother him if even one piece is bare when he's not here. Even with cameras everywhere, a reinforced door with more locks than is effective, and lethally offensive security between his work and the outside world, it will bother him. “Goddamnit, Steve. We have to box up the collection before we leave. Start putting them back in their crates, I'll go grab my tools.”

 

Steve shouts after him, “I have no idea what I'm doing, but okay!” It's not like it's hard. You put it in the crate and put the shock absorber-y stuff around it. He should really know what that stuff is called by now, but he buys it in bulk and forgets about it until he needs more. Besides, Steve is smart and he won't need to use the forklift; he'll figure it out.

 

When Bucky's retrieved his tools from the sectioned off area, he finds that Steve has done literally nothing in the meantime. He's just staring at the  _ Twelfth _ . “That's the one from May. I finished that after we got through a whole evening: no attacks, no tears, and everybody got off, even. I was proud of myself. And of us.” He smiles for Steve, even though he's not 100% up to smiling right now. Steve should see the happiness he brings, even if he can't see it in the collection.

 

“I remember how happy you were, and I remember you were afraid to do anything again for a week. You were afraid that night was a fluke, you said, that we might not be able to have that kind of success again.” He really wishes Steve didn't remember shit like that. Especially when the stupid punk uses it to make himself so sad.

 

“Steve, you might notice that I have a history of not trusting good things being in my life, exhibit A, the last five years since Bucharest. Exhibit B, the two years prior, which, sorry, you weren't there for that, because I didn't trust good things being in my life.” Bucky doesn't sound snippy right now because he's kind of monotone at this point, but his words suffice. “If you remember it took a week to try again, you should remember that after that week, we were great and I didn't worry anymore. Even with the couple of times I've gotten scared and cried or accidentally hurt you since then, we've been fine. I don't worry about it. I've got you and we get through everything together. You start a fight, I finish it. I forget that I'm home and I'm safe, you kiss me until I remember. Make a great team, Stevie.”

 

No, Steve shouldn't cry. Oh, he's crying. Bucky hates seeing him cry. “You got a way with words, jerk. Geez, I'm getting all teary-eyed over your sculptures named after my dick. Hey, if this one's about us finally getting it right, what's the one you made after that?”

 

“I'm telling you about it because you're crying, but I'm not showing you. Not like I don't have enough crates open already, but that one is for me, okay? Buried with it, ain't gonna see the light of day.” He has to keep some kind of promise to himself.

 

“Buck, you don't have to tell or show me anything you don't want to. I was just asking, is all.” Steve is sweet, but he's still crying. Bucky would steal God's rosary if Steve was crying.

 

“Punk, you asked, you're getting it. So, the  _ Thirteenth _ was made after that week, after we got it right again and I wasn't afraid, but it's not about that. It's about that very first night we tried. Everything went wrong, and you had to hold me all night because I was so shaken from that panic attack that I nearly knocked your block off when you first tried to touch me. Yeah, sounds awful when I describe it that way, doesn't it? But after you were holding me and I started to calm down, I realized that I was so happy. No, let me talk. I was so excited that we were trying to do all that together, and I hoped so much that we might get even a little better the next time we tried. I hoped for us doing everything, but even a little would be amazing. It would mean us moving forward together, right? I loved it. But the reason I was so happy? I realized that even if we never made any progress, if the best we ever did was you holding me all night, I was going to be happy for the rest of my life. After a year and having success and losing my fear, I remembered that. It's meant so much to me. It applies to everything I've ever struggled with since Bucharest: more progress would be amazing, but even if all I get is the progress I've already made with you, I will die a happy man.”

 

Now Steve  _ and _ Bucky are crying. But not weeping or anything. That soft crying where you don't sniffle so bad and if someone is a real sweetheart, they'll wipe at your tears with their thumb. Like Steve is doing for Bucky right now. “Hey, baby, don't cry. You just said the sweetest thing I ever heard, not even just the sweetest thing ever said to me, including our wedding vows. Though I'm glad you didn't say that at the wedding, if only because I never want Tony to know that we had to practice having sex, regardless of our circumstances. God forbid Natasha have that kind of dirt.”

 

“Talia already knows. I talked to her about it while that was going on. She totally understands. I didn't tell her the emotional aspects, but her support was great. She suggested the pillow thing.”

 

“Give her my most sincere thanks for the pillow thing and my most heartfelt request that we never discuss it or why it was helpful to us. I love that she was there for you, I really do, but I don't want to have any kind of conversation with her that even tangentially relates to my dick. Or your dick. Or anyone's dick. Tony is bad enough.” Steve isn't wrong on that last one.

 

“No dick conversations with Talia, got it. Now that we're decently cried out, though, can we actually take care of these?” It takes only about fifteen minutes for the two of them to get the collection in its crates properly with the shock absorber-y stuff. Of course, it isn't until then that Bucky realizes he doesn't actually have anything in his tools that they can use to close up the crates. That's all at the studio, where he crates up his finished work. He’s never had an open crate here before, there's never been a need to close one. He just stores shit here. Why would he put collection on display for the Russians here if he didn't have anything to box them up again? God, Bucky is an idiot.

 

“Hey, hey, no. I know that face. Yeah, your beating-yourself-up face. So knock it off. Whatever it is, we'll figure it out. Tell me what's going on.” Is he really that tired that he can't even hide this little thing?

 

“I didn't bring the right tools to close up the crates. I don't normally keep them here and I didn't bring them. Because I am twatwaffle.”

 

“I don't actually know what you mean by that, but I'm sure you're not one of those, so stop it. Is there anything we can use instead? Like, makeshift something or other? Ooh! Hammer in a nail with the Arm! That'd be fun. Or would that damage the skin?”

 

“Stevie, you couldn't even build a latrine in the war, do not try to be a handyman right now. And no, I am not going to use the Arm to bash at a wood box that covers my goddamned artwork. Yeah, we had it recalibrated for more delicate movements, but I think that's asking a bit much of an arm-shaped death machine. And no it probably wouldn't majorly damage the skin Tony put on it, but you know how much I had to sweet talk him into giving me the hyper-realistic version. If I fuck this up somehow, I'm never gonna hear the end of it. Or, I'll be walking around with a knuckle hanging off or something. Though, somehow, that's more appealing.” Bucky sighs. Steve is such a little shit. Says something stupid so Bucky has to correct him, Bucky is distracted from his self-loathing. That little shit. He loves him.

 

“Well, if we can't board 'em up without tools that aren't here, I say we go home for now and get the tools tomorrow. Not much else to be done about it.” Steve shrugs with finality. He's right, too. Bucky literally can't do anything to fix this right now. And bringing Steve to the studio to get his tools would be good, include him more in all this shit he's been hiding. He probably won't appreciate the shelf of Talia’s threatening self-help books, but he might appreciate why she left them.

 

“Fine, lemmie turn off the lights and we'll go.” After the overhead lights are off, the offensive system is topped off, everything is locked five times, and everything, everything is double-checked and alarmed, Bucky meets Steve waiting at the Super Duty. Because sometimes, that's all it takes to feel safe.

 

They climb in, buckle up, and actually hold hands as they get on the road. It's really nice, up until Steve opens his big yap. “Your landlord know you put in all that extra security? Five locks seems like a lot.”

 

“Your wide ass broke in through a tiny ventilation system that dosed you with hydrogen cyanide, yet you question the locks. My husband, a gentleman and a scholar.”

 

“I'm not saying I didn't see the rest o- ...you hit me with  _ what _ in that ventilation shaft?”

 

“Don’t look at me like that, you're fine. You know I would never use anything that could harm you. I may have been designed to be immune to more poisons than you, but I have not once used, carried, or equipped  _ any _ poison that could potentially hurt you. Not since DC, and I didn't always know who you were at that point. I just had to keep you safe.”

 

“Bucky, I appreciate you looking out for me, but the fact that you've used  _ any _ poisons since then is kinda terrible. Like, that drop box upsets me-”

 

“I actually have a lot of those all over the city, but I've never used one before today, and I only did because the fifty grand seemed shady so I wanted to stash it until I could have it checked.”

 

“...okay, the drop boxes  _ plural _ upset me, but having your storage place armed with a deadly poison has me really concerned. Are you worried they're after you again? Do you think there's any of them left?”

 

“No, if there's any left, they'll never risk looking. I'd say I'd earned that fear pretty well, before Bucharest.”

 

“Yes, we're all glad you burned them to the ground, me most of all, but would get back to the poison thing? We talked about you potentially hurting innocent people. You don't carry guns or knives anymore, and I know that was an enormous fear to overcome, but that was for the safety of others, and you did it. Sure you rarely have situations that you might harm strangers anymore, but a weapon would have exacerbated the issue a few years ago.”

 

“Okay, but I'm not carrying around poison, Steve. I'm not going to accidentally poison anyone when I get scared and think I'm going in the chair again. The system only disperses anything if it's triggered by an intrusion. It doesn't even get tripped by a bird getting caught somewhere; I know, because I built it that way. Even if it malfunctions, which it won't, 99.9999% of the time the only person in there is me, and it doesn't hurt me. Before the buyers this weekend,  _ no one _ had been in there but me. Hell, before you crawling through there today, the system had never even disbursed anything outside of testing.”

 

“Then why are you using it? Why is it there? No one is after you, no one trying to break into the place, there's no point!”

 

“Stevie, it's the same answer you never accept, so I'm not even gonna say it again.”

 

“Poison should not be a prerequisite to feeling safe, Buck! You can break a man's face with one hand and punch through his chest with the other! You are never not safe!”

 

“How can you even say that to me? You saw what I was like before in DC. You read the files. I know there's things in there I might never remember, but I don't have to remember to know that I'm supposed to be afraid. A lot of the time, that's what being a person is to me, Steve. It's being afraid. The Asset was just a fist to crush things, a weapon in a walking corpse, but it didn't fear. Pain was inevitable, death was inevitable, but fear was not something it felt.” Fuck, he's crying again. This shouldn't be happening. Why does he even talk about any of this? Steve's heard it before, from Bucky  _ and _ Andrew. How does he ignore the words of a therapist? Forget Bucky, who's actually feeling all this, at least listen to the guy with the degrees.

 

“Baby, pull over, let's talk about this.” Oh, he's pulling out the crying-husband pet name. Is it because he's worried about Bucky or worried about Bucky crashing the truck? Joke's on you, pal: the Super Duty can take it. “Baby, please pull over. You're upset and you're tired, so let's park over there and talk. Plenty of room, no one will sideswipe the truck while we're there. Babydoll, please just pull over.”

 

That one is unusual enough to temporarily pull his head out of his ass. Bucky can't even remember the last time Steve called him Babydoll. They don't really do pet names unless there are waterworks involved, and even then it's just, 'Baby,’ and nothing more. This is weird. Bucky pulls into a parking lot and parks. He takes three deep breaths before trying to speak. “No matter what anyone would like for me, at this point in my recovery, I am still afraid a lot of the time. Usually that fear is manageable anxiety, but not always. One of the most effective ways of making myself feel safer is doing things the Asset would do protect itself. It doesn't matter if the behavior is rational or appropriate to what my life is now; if it's a kind of protection, it calms me down faster than pretty much anything other than clinging to you like a koala. I'm working on learning other stuff to do, I'm trying to not do weird shit, but this is where I am. Andrew says that having physical intimacy with you was a matter of  _ re _ learning something. This is a matter of  _ un _ learning something, and that's harder for me to do.”

 

“I’m sorry that I haven't been supporting you like I should, Baby. You've told me time and again what you deal with everyday, and I guess I still don't really understand. Andrew told me the last time we spoke that I expect too much too quickly from you. He's right. I just didn't want him to be. I guess a part of me wants there to be a point that you don't have to work so hard all the time anymore, you put in your fight long enough and then you're done. You just go back to living. But it doesn't work like that. I just, I want you to feel safe, Baby, and I would carry you on my back so you could be a koala all day if I could, but I can't do that. I'm just asking you to be smart about what you do to feel safe. Check all points of egress ten times if you need to. Keep upgrading the Super Duty until it's practically a tank. Keep all the extra locks and cameras you want at your storage place, Baby. Just don't do anything that could hurt someone else to make you feel better, okay?  _ Please _ get rid of your poison thing when we go back tomorrow, because you would have killed anyone else up there, Bucky. I can't let you do that. You're not that person anymore.”

 

Fuck, too much crying. The weepy kind, too. Any more of this and he might actually need Steve to drive them the rest of the way home. The Super Duty cannot have that. “Thank you for listening to me, Stevie, and for trying. I'll take it out and get rid of it tomorrow, but I want it on record that I agree being a koala all day is clearly the best option. But, um, why did you call me Babydoll earlier? I don't really remember when you've ever called me that. It was..not weird, but it caught me off guard.”

 

Steve blushes at that. All his talking about dicks earlier and it's a pet name that gets him. This punk, Bucky swears. “That's, uh, because I never called you that before today. I just kind of hoped it would help. I mean, before Project Rebirth, before you left for the war, and we were just us in that tiny little apartment, and I'd get so mad about something I'd start crying when I'd tell you about it, or we'd be so broke we barely ate, or I'd get so sick that we weren't sure I'd make it through the week, I mean- You were so good to me, and you'd talk to me and hold me and wipe away my tears. And you'd call me your Babydoll, and I loved it. I mean, I swear I tried to beat the tar outta anyone else that dared call me something like that, but when you said it, it was the most romantic thing in the world. Hearing that made me feel like you were there for me, that we were together, we were safe. After the Cap thing started and we were never alone, even in a tent in the middle of the fucking woods in Italy, I never heard you say it again. Maybe the Howlies wouldn't have cared, I dunno, but you never called me your Babydoll. Don't worry about all that, though. I just tried saying it to see if it'd help.”

 

Bucky used to say that? Before-before? He wishes he remembered doing that. Obviously it meant the world to Steve. “Would you like me to call you that again? Not that it would be forced or anything. If it makes you happy, I'll call you anything you ask. I guess I've just been operating under the assumption that we didn't really do pet names. Wait, did you call me something cutesy, too? Did you stop when I stopped? Was it like how you said we couldn't kiss outside our apartment? That we'd be attacked?” This is too many questions, but now that Bucky knows this is a part of their relationship before-before that he doesn't remember, he wants to know everything all at once. He realizes this isn't helpful Steve, the holder of historical information, but they're parked and Bucky is letting his eyes dry out from the ocean that was previously occupying them.

 

“Yeah, coupla queers like us had to keep the targets off our backs. A couple of guys in our neighborhood got beat up just for 'acting queer,’ and they ran around with plenty of girls. I mean, you did, too, but you just wanted to go dancing. I dunno, I'm just saying that you probably stopped calling me Babydoll because of that. No tiny apartment to hide in and be sweet when you're fighting a war. And, uh, yeah, I called you something cute, too. You didn't always like it so much, but it grew on you after I kept saying it. Then with the Howlies, I'd still call you it, but I'd make like I was being an ass about it. They all did stuff like that, so I thought I'd be smart and still call you Sugar. 'Cuz y-’”

 

“'-You’re so sweet on me.’” HOLY SHIT HE REMEMBERS! Steve started calling him that after they first kissed. Bucky had been working at the docks so he was all sweaty and gross, but he went to see Steve anyway and their usual mix of chatting and flirting became straight up flirting, and Bucky simply asked to kiss him. So they did, and it sloppy and sweet and kinda bad in the way best teenage kisses are. And of course Steve immediately started giving Bucky shit about him being in love with him, because he's Steve. And he wasn't wrong.

 

“So you remember? Like, it came just now? Wait, when do you remember, though? I said that a  _ lot _ .” Steve is excited as hell, too. Bucky wants to be called Sugar by this man for the rest of forever and then some.

 

“Well, not that you need this information now, but it's kind of a faux pas to tell your first boyfriend that he loves you before he's figured it out himself. He might not even kiss you again for four days because you're such a dick.” Eat shit, Babydoll.

 

“OH MY GOD! I WAS SO MAD ABOUT THAT! You gave me my first kiss and then wouldn't let me kiss you more! That's all you wanna  _ do _ after your first kiss! You were an evil, kiss-stealing teenager, Bucky Barnes!” And Steve calls  _ him _ over dramatic. This is great.

 

“Excuse me, Babydoll, but seeing as I remember the event now, I can assure you that I stole nothing. That was a free exchange of kisses. Now, if you are interested in a free exchange of kisses with considerably better skill involved, I'm driving our asses home.”

 

Bucky starts the Super Duty back up and gets back on the road. They're about two blocks from the house when Steve suddenly looks in the back seat. “Sugar, I hate to break it to you, but you've got a shit ton of little dumplings strewn across the floor back here. Looks like something bust open and it smells like two cloves of garlic are making a baby.”

_ Fuck. _


End file.
